I miss Yorda, yeah she didn't help, but if I lost I would become less frustated than I would if she was actually helping because it would be my fault, unlike other escorts that simply don't know their place. I like I am wrestling with taming Trico and he isn't a giant walking platform I must constantly instruct, and there were theories that maybe he/she/it would obey you more the more you petted its head, it hasn't been totally debunked.

I love that the Last Guardian doesn't bow down to the clich?s of "boy finds friendly creature" that plague cinema, you know which ones: the beast gets exhiled, the boy gets hurt, the beast rampages, but snaps back to the power of friendship and everything is fine until an out-of-nowhere disaster forces them to separate in order to teach a lesson about growing up and letting it go. I swear, I see this setup way too often it's almost like the indie SCSW (Small Child, Scary World) genre in gaming.

I can understand people getting frustrated when Trico accidentally gets you killed by missing a catch, but the very rare times it happened to me I actually found it pretty amusing. I remember there's one point where he picks you up and tosses you onto his back, but during my third playthrough -- either by me having nudged the analog stick or chance -- I missed his back and fell to my death. That was the best laugh a game had given me this year.

And yeah, the title is rather meaningless, seeing as there's no real last of anything. Unless they mean that thing at the end, but that's a stretch. But I guess that's what you get when western marketing redubs a Japanese title. Shadow of the Colossus was Wander and the Colossus, and The Last Guardian was something along the lines of Trico the Man-Eating Monster.

Johnny Novgorod:Didn't Ueda leave The Last Guardian mid-production? Did he come back? I forget now.

He quit Sony during developement, but was kept on as a freelance developer. I think this happened along with a bunch of other members from Team Ico quitting, because during the games' intro credits it says genDESIGN next to certain developers' names, and genDESIGN is apparently Ueda's new studio.

Judas Rocking Priest, it's been 9 years since The Last Guardian was first announced? I thought this project was shitcanned for good after 3. Is the giant dog-bird-thing really that fussy while playing? Yahtzee makes this game sound like Team ICO's own Duke Nukem Forever. Which is hilarious.

Darth_Payn:Judas Rocking Priest, it's been 9 years since The Last Guardian was first announced? I thought this project was shitcanned for good after 3. Is the giant dog-bird-thing really that fussy while playing? Yahtzee makes this game sound like Team ICO's own Duke Nukem Forever. Which is hilarious.

When games like Duke Nukem Forever and Too Human suffer lots of delays on top of a change in platform, people now tend to approach carefully games that have the slightest hint of delay.

See, I thought Ico was an absolutely appalling game, so all these comparisons to it in both setting, controls and narrative do not bode well for me. You can coat your game in as much vague "atmosphere", as many camera sweeps and as much eye-searing bloom as you like*, but if your controls are a bag of angry cats, your camera is atrocious and your AI is brain-dead, your game ends up being a pretentious over-hyped pile of garbage.

SotC was pretty alright, I guess.

*Remember that Ico also took them so long to make that a whole new console came out, so they tried to hide the hideous PS1 graphics with BLOOM BLOOM SO MUCH BLOOM. I first played it on a plasma TV. My optician is still furious.

Now I'll break the sarcasm and actually talk about how it was played wrong: you don't need to order Trico to jump from platform to platform every freaking time. Once he starts, he'll keep going until an obstacle stops him from jumping.

Now I'll break the sarcasm and actually talk about how it was played wrong: you don't need to order Trico to jump from platform to platform every freaking time. Once he starts, he'll keep going until an obstacle stops him from jumping.

There's also the issue that if you spam commands at him in quick succession you disrupt his "thought process". Even if it's the same command, if you re-issue it before giving him time to process it it'll reset his assesment of the situation.

Now I'll break the sarcasm and actually talk about how it was played wrong: you don't need to order Trico to jump from platform to platform every freaking time. Once he starts, he'll keep going until an obstacle stops him from jumping.

There's also the issue that if you spam commands at him in quick succession you disrupt his "thought process". Even if it's the same command, if you re-issue it before giving him time to process it it'll reset his assesment of the situation.

Yeah, I couldn't had worded it better. Whatever that simulated behavior was intentional or not, it's certainly counterintuitive against the recent years of gaming experience with responsive (althrough frequently incompetent) AIs.

Might be why it took so long ... getting Trico's AI perfect ... until Sony told them that they way behind schedule and that they would like the game out sometime this century (preferably within the PS4's life time), thus "good enough" AI (YMMV) was what everyone got.

The dogbirdbeast's more irritating behaviors often get defended as "realistic". If this game were called "Guardian Training Simulator 2016" I would accept that as an excuse. But it's not nearly as okay in a puzzle platformer.

In terms of laughs: this was the best episode in a while. In terms of the actual review: sounds pretty like the general consensus of the controls being "wonky", to put it nicely, and whether or not you'll enjoy it depends on whether or not you'll appreciate the aesthetic enough to look beyond the crappy mechanics.

With the title "The Last Guardian" the way I see it is that the cat-eagle-chinchilla-ferret beast is either the last guardian for the boy in a coming of age story as he will hopefully learn to fend for himself, or the boy labels him his last guardian after the credits roll from sheer exasperation at the incompetence endured, with the final words something along the lines of "if you want something done properly..."

To be fair, I think the uncontrollability of the creature was sort of the point. It was an independent being with its own thoughts. Didn't make it less frustrating when he undid a lot of progress, but it felt like a real animal.

I almost called it quits on the part with the diving, too. I'm glad I'm not the only one that had trouble with that.

That aside, I really did enjoy the game, if for no other reason than I knew what I was signing up for when you have a young kid and a giant pet - lots of patience, frustration, miscommunication, but rewarding when you feel like the AI lined up with what you had in mind.

I do think a lot of patience is needed to play through it proficiently, observing and waiting to see what Trico thinks and does in a situation. The 'diving' part can screw right off, though.

Edit: ALSO I dunno if anyone else had this issue but I had a big problem with mashing every button on my controller every time a guard caught me - I always had that lingering feeling that it was contributing to that day when my controller would break. That's a terrible system that's the opposite of innovative. "Just mash ALL THE BUTTONS AT ONCE to break free! It's that simple!"

mrdude2010:To be fair, I think the uncontrollability of the creature was sort of the point. It was an independent being with its own thoughts. Didn't make it less frustrating when he undid a lot of progress, but it felt like a real animal.

A number of people with pets took issue with those "Trico is like a real animal" claims, Jim Sterling especially, he said his own dog was way more obedient then Trico ever was.